‘How old are you?’ he asked.
I told him I was nearly eighteen, although in reality I had just turned sixteen.
‘Have you ever taken drawing classes?’
I said I hadn’t.
‘So you like the girl, eh?’ he said.
‘Can you tell from the drawings?’ I asked.
‘You can, from the number of times you’ve drawn her.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you lack technique, but that can be learned. Go to La Esmeralda.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s an art school.’
He grabbed the sketchbook from me, selected a blank page at random and, leaning against the wall, started writing with a pen he took from the pocket of his overcoat, an overcoat too heavy for the warm weather at the time.
‘Where is the school?’
‘On Callejón de la Esmeralda.’
He gave me back the notebook and took his leave, saying: ‘Don’t hang around here; the police will think you’re a thief, and some of Diego and Frida’s friends will get nervous. Go and take a walk, or else you’ll end up a model too with that nose of yours, only for a still life.’
I watched his melancholy walk as he left and, when he had gone far enough so he couldn’t see my reaction to his note, I read what he’d written in my sketch pad:
To the Directors of the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, La Esmeralda: I hereby request that the boy bearing this letter be enrolled in life-drawing classes. He might well learn how to hold a pencil, or at the very least get to see a naked woman.
Yours faithfully, Juan O’Gorman.
~ ~ ~
I had stayed in my apartment, monitoring things from the balcony, until at last I had seen the procession of salon members, led by Francesca, leave the building and head for the Jardín de Epicuro. Then I initiated the operation to recover my Aesthetic Theory. I crossed the twelve feet separating my door from Francesca’s and, into the crack, inserted my ID card from the National Institute of Senescence, which last year had changed its name to the National Institute of Mature Adults but I hadn’t got a new card yet. It took me two seconds to hear the click that announced the opening of the door; it was something I’d had to do more than once, after locking myself out. On these occasions, when she came across me fiddling with my door, Francesca would accuse me: ‘Perhaps if you didn’t drink so much…’
‘If I didn’t drink so much the locks on doors would be impossible to pick?’
I pushed the door and at that moment the shrill noise of the alarm rang out, which, as well as giving me palpitations for a couple of hours, meant I was obliged to put a few drops of painkiller into my ears. I shut the door and went back to my apartment as fast as I could. The alarm shut itself off two minutes later. All I managed to see, through the half-open door, was a poster of Octavio Paz hanging from the living-room wall.
~ ~ ~
I was debating with Willem about what dead people would look like when they came back to life, on Judgement Day: would they really rise up from under the ground, covered in soil, half-rotten, or would they materialise immaculate, translucent, incorporeal, like a spiritual presence?
‘Just imagine, Villem,’ I said. ‘Everyone who’s ever died in the history of humanity — how many do you reckon there are — thousands of millions, surely? Think of them all suddenly above ground, some just skeletons, others with bits of rotting flesh hanging off them, all covered in maggots, and as if that wasn’t enough, the huge great cloud of ashes from the ones who were cremated; the Bible’s such a gruesome book!’
‘It won’t happen like that,’ Willem replied. ‘The Bible isn’t meant to be interperted that closely.’
‘Look who’s talking! Of course it’ll be like that, that’s what it’s like in films and when it comes to the living dead the cinema has always used the Bible as a guide.’
‘Felms are very often sinful.’
‘Oh really!’
Just then the intercom buzzed and interrupted our disquisitions. I picked up the receiver and heard Mao’s voice.
‘I’ve come from the TCF.’
‘The Twisted Consumerist Federation?’
‘The Trotskyist Cockroach Fumigators.’
‘You can start in the lobby, it’s crawling with literary pests.’
‘You got it.’
‘Come on up.’
Willem put his Bible (in which he’d been consulting passages on the Apocalypse) back in his rucksack, and asked:
‘Wouldyuh like me to go?’
‘No, stay,’ I replied. ‘It’s a friend of mine, you’ll like him.’
We positioned ourselves to wait for Mao to appear but since, as usual, he took ages to arrive, Willem took his Bible out again and started going after cockroaches. Ever since the Aesthetic Theory had been kidnapped, the cockroaches were proliferating merrily; I had tried to reduce their numbers with Notes to Literature, but the book was very slight and no matter how hard I thwacked the creatures I only left them stunned. Finally Mao rapped out the entry code on the door with his knuckles. I opened it and saw that Dorotea was with him. I raised my eyebrows mischievously.
‘If you want to use my apartment,’ I informed him, ‘you need to let me know in advance, and you’ve got to bring your own sheets. Besides, I’ve got company. But come on in, I think your girlfriend wanted to meet my pal here.’
They crossed the threshold and as soon as Mao detected Willem’s presence he stepped back as if heading for the door again.
‘Is this an ambush?’ he asked.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Organised by Jesus Christ.’
‘I’m serious,’ Mao insisted: ‘Everyone knows the Mormons work for the CIA.’
‘Relax, Mao,’ I told him. ‘My friend Villem here says that spying’s a sin.’
Mao looked at him as he whacked his Bible against the wall to squash a cockroach. A sarcastic expression appeared on his face, interpreting — erroneously — that using the word of God as a bug-killer was an act of heterodoxy that at least merited the benefit of the doubt.
‘Spyin’ is a sin,’ Willem confirmed, as he wiped the cover of his Bible off with a piece of toilet paper.
‘And it’s not a sin to use the Bible to squash cockroaches?’ Mao asked. ‘Isn’t it a sin to kill little animals?’
‘Cockroaches are the Devel’s beasts,’ said Willem. ‘The word of the Lard is very firm about the Devel.’
Dorotea went over to Willem and held out her hand, unsure whether to greet him with a kiss or not. Willem’s hands were full and in his confusion he ended up stuffing the toilet paper containing the remains of the cockroach into his trouser pocket.
‘Hello, Willem, how are you doing?’ Dorotea said.
‘You know each other?’ Mao interrupted.
‘They met the other day,’ I put in, ‘when your girlfriend came to accuse me and my friend here used his visit to betray me.’
What with Dorotea hesitating and Willem growing more awkward, instead of kissing hello they had ended up with their hands intertwined, gently moving them up and down.
‘Are you going to let go of her hand, buddy?’ Mao said, in English.
‘Calm down, comrade,’ I said. ‘So much revolution and clandestine activity and all to end up acting like a guy in a telenovela. What have you brought me? I warn you, Villem’s tried everything and just look around, the roaches are happy as Larry.’